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leeball's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed the detail in this book related to the time period and what life was like back then. I had never heard of this type of situation where people who had lost their minds needed to be returned home - east, though after reading about their hardships is completely understandable. I found the book interesting and shocking at times. The ending was disappointing for me, though I don't know what exactly I was hoping for instead. All in all, I'm glad I read it. I rented the movie from the local library when I was finished - and it was terrible. I do not recommend the movie.
smartgirlsread's review against another edition
2.0
Check out my review at SmartGirlsRead!
http://smartgirlsread.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-homesman-by-glendon-swarthout.html
http://smartgirlsread.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-homesman-by-glendon-swarthout.html
sarahkbain's review against another edition
4.0
Okay, my neighbor recommended this book to me, and I had no idea what it was about. I just started reading. It is one of the most profoundly sad novels I've read in a long time. It was hauntingly compelling but such sorrow came from the pages of these women who suffered such tragedy on the plains. Of course as I read this, I have been reading the Little House series to my son at the same time. This novel is like the antidote to those novels which paints Haight drama and excitement on the prairies while this novel tells us only of sorrow and loss. The writing is lovely. But be prepared for deep sorrow.
kimk's review against another edition
2.0
The first 2/3 of the book was very good. However, the story then took a bizarre twist and the rest of the book was terrible. I was very disappointed.
archergal's review against another edition
4.0
I watched the movie based on this book one afternoon when I was bingeing on Tommy Lee Jones movies. It was in the Netflix section of "Movies based in books." So I looked the book up. It was available on Scribd, so I read it basically in one day.
The story's about 4 women (there were only 3 in the movie) who'd gone mad during a bad winter in their homesteads on the Great Plains. Since crazy women in that time were no good to settlers, the local community arranged for them to be sent back east to their families or to insane asylums. None of the husbands can/will take time off to take the women back. Mary Bee Cuddy, a single woman with her own homestead, volunteers to do the transporting. She ends up with an unlikely helper in George Briggs, a man who's been left to hang because he's a claim jumper.
Spoilers from here on.
The movie is very faithful to the book. I thought the movie was a bit odd, in that it seemed to be about Mary Bee Cuddy at first. As the story unfolds, though, George Briggs gets more time up front. And when Mary hangs herself, George is the one character we have left to follow. George is NOT an admirable character. You might view the last part of the book as almost a redemption arc, except for the fact that George isn't redeemed. It's pretty clear he's going back to his old ways as soon as he can. He just had a few moments of clarity/responsibility that let him complete something he'd promised to do. He had a bit more regard for Mary Cuddy than he realized. But she's gone now, and his obligations are done.
While we 'd had hints through the story that Mary wasn't quite the bastion of stability she seemed, I was still shocked by her suicide. This passage (Briggs' musings on their trip) may be key:
"When they set out from Loup, she was as much man as she was woman. She could ride and shoot and handle a span of mules and give orders. Day by day, though, on the trail, there were more and more things she couldn’t do, that only he could, and did, and that rubbed her the wrong way. Gradually all she could manage was to cook and care for the passengers and take his orders and be a woman. That broke her spirit and her mind."
Excerpt From: "The Homesman: A Novel" by Glendon Swarthout. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read this book on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/book/224236530
That, and loneliness. Loneliness is a powerful thing.
It's a good story, told in spare, uncomplicated prose that keeps you turning pages. I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't seen the movie, but I'm glad I read it.
The story's about 4 women (there were only 3 in the movie) who'd gone mad during a bad winter in their homesteads on the Great Plains. Since crazy women in that time were no good to settlers, the local community arranged for them to be sent back east to their families or to insane asylums. None of the husbands can/will take time off to take the women back. Mary Bee Cuddy, a single woman with her own homestead, volunteers to do the transporting. She ends up with an unlikely helper in George Briggs, a man who's been left to hang because he's a claim jumper.
Spoilers from here on.
The movie is very faithful to the book. I thought the movie was a bit odd, in that it seemed to be about Mary Bee Cuddy at first. As the story unfolds, though, George Briggs gets more time up front. And when Mary hangs herself, George is the one character we have left to follow. George is NOT an admirable character. You might view the last part of the book as almost a redemption arc, except for the fact that George isn't redeemed. It's pretty clear he's going back to his old ways as soon as he can. He just had a few moments of clarity/responsibility that let him complete something he'd promised to do. He had a bit more regard for Mary Cuddy than he realized. But she's gone now, and his obligations are done.
While we 'd had hints through the story that Mary wasn't quite the bastion of stability she seemed, I was still shocked by her suicide. This passage (Briggs' musings on their trip) may be key:
"When they set out from Loup, she was as much man as she was woman. She could ride and shoot and handle a span of mules and give orders. Day by day, though, on the trail, there were more and more things she couldn’t do, that only he could, and did, and that rubbed her the wrong way. Gradually all she could manage was to cook and care for the passengers and take his orders and be a woman. That broke her spirit and her mind."
Excerpt From: "The Homesman: A Novel" by Glendon Swarthout. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read this book on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/book/224236530
That, and loneliness. Loneliness is a powerful thing.
It's a good story, told in spare, uncomplicated prose that keeps you turning pages. I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't seen the movie, but I'm glad I read it.
shereadsalotofbooks's review against another edition
3.0
It was a good read until the author killed off the strong female protagonist before the end of the book.
larrys's review against another edition
4.0
I've seen the movie adaptation of *The Homesman* a number of times and have already written extensively about that. Turns out the film follows the novel quite closely.
I certainly have my issues with it, not as a stand-alone product but as part of a corpus of work in which women exist to offer a men their character arc. Then she has sex and gets killed. Ho boy, do I have an issue with all the stories out there which lean on that hoary old set of tropes.
On the other hand, I absolutely love anti-Westerns, I love Swarthout's style of writing, I love the depiction of the scenery, and I did love Mary Bee while she was alive. I looked forward to reading this book each time I set it down, there's no denying that. I am also a sucker for a tragedy in which the main character comes so close to leading a good life, then misses the mark. For the exact same reason, I fall about sobbing after watching *The Wrestler* and reading *Dead Man's Walk*.
I would like to add one scene to this book. Swarthout's son wrote the after notes to the film-release version of the paperback, and his summary of the mid 1800s era mitigates one of the possible gender problems in the novel -- the preponderance of 'crazy' women (especially when even the sensible one suicides). Back then, mentally ill men out West were simply taken out and shot. But because of benevolent sexism, they couldn't shoot women, which is why women had to be transported back East. Perhaps if there had been a scene in which a 'crazy man' had been taken out and left for dead (not just a wily, trickster one), this would've worked to allay the dominant cultural message that going crazy is a particularly feminine attribute. Even today, the strongly femme-coding of mental illness does nothing to help men seek help when it's needed.
I certainly have my issues with it, not as a stand-alone product but as part of a corpus of work in which women exist to offer a men their character arc. Then she has sex and gets killed. Ho boy, do I have an issue with all the stories out there which lean on that hoary old set of tropes.
On the other hand, I absolutely love anti-Westerns, I love Swarthout's style of writing, I love the depiction of the scenery, and I did love Mary Bee while she was alive. I looked forward to reading this book each time I set it down, there's no denying that. I am also a sucker for a tragedy in which the main character comes so close to leading a good life, then misses the mark. For the exact same reason, I fall about sobbing after watching *The Wrestler* and reading *Dead Man's Walk*.
I would like to add one scene to this book. Swarthout's son wrote the after notes to the film-release version of the paperback, and his summary of the mid 1800s era mitigates one of the possible gender problems in the novel -- the preponderance of 'crazy' women (especially when even the sensible one suicides). Back then, mentally ill men out West were simply taken out and shot. But because of benevolent sexism, they couldn't shoot women, which is why women had to be transported back East. Perhaps if there had been a scene in which a 'crazy man' had been taken out and left for dead (not just a wily, trickster one), this would've worked to allay the dominant cultural message that going crazy is a particularly feminine attribute. Even today, the strongly femme-coding of mental illness does nothing to help men seek help when it's needed.